In 2020, at the dawn of a global pandemic, the world witnessed the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The collective response included uprisings in cities across the nation; calls to defund the police, to climate qualified immunity, and the demand for the immediate imprisonment of Derek Chauvin,…
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Nicole Scott started The BRidge Agency with the goal of it acting as the bridge connecting community members and the resources needed to meet their needs. Her own experience living in Baton Rouge is proof that families that are struggling are often unaware of the help that’s available. Nearing its fifth anniversary, the scope of…
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Former prosecutor brings history and passion to transformative vision for justice Equal Justice USA announced today that Jamila Hodge will be the organization’s next executive director, and just the second in its history. She will step into the role in September 2021 as the nation continues to reckon with the damage done by a system…
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From Reform to Reimagining: Lessons and Reflections on the Journey to Transformation I’ve had the privilege of leading EJUSA through two major transitions – a spinoff from our parent organization to become an independent organization in 2008 and a 10-year process to remake our mission and vision from reforming the justice system to building a…
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Wyoming took the country by surprise in 2019 when it came within four votes of repealing the death penalty. That was the closest we had ever come to repealing the death penalty despite lawmakers introducing repeal bills every year for the past decade. Representative Jared Olsen, a Republican from Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital city, carried the…
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For the first time, Newark officials expanded the Public Safety Awards Ceremony to recognize more than just the police department in the quest to build safer communities. EJUSA’s Will Simpson, our director of violence reduction initiatives, was just one of three honorees who is a member of the EJUSA family. “The award really belongs to…
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Clearing the federal death row is the best way to ensure that the U.S. government does not risk the irreversible horror of executing innocent people like Carlos DeLuna, whose case is documented in the film The Phantom. In 1989, Texas executed Mr. DeLuna for a murder that someone else likely committed.
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There have been two constants in Donna Roman Hernandez’s life: trauma and a deep desire to help people. Both elements are deeply entwined. Donna served her community for 30 years as a police officer in New Jersey, retiring as a captain having commanded a domestic violence response team and police in-service domestic violence training unit….
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In his own words, Clemente Aguirre describes how he spent almost 15 years on death row in Florida for a crime he didn’t commit. I know the torture of fighting against a government that wanted to kill me. The state saw me as just a disposable, undocumented immigrant, and I lost almost 15 years of…
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A first term president has — officially — 1,460 days to enact an agenda through policy and action for the American people. But the first 100 days have always drawn a huge amount of attention as a traditional measure of what’s to come. They are presented with all the opportunity and hope of a new…
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